1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital circuitry, and more particularly to a fast round robin circuit in the form of an electronic digital circuit that provides resource arbitration via a round robin priority scheme.
2. Description of the Related Art
The design of digital hardware generally follows the bottom-up paradigm. Desired behavior is translated into digital circuits that are assembled together to form the whole solution for a particular application. Several circuit categories exist in the field. Some are very common, such as memory blocks, counters, decoders, multiplexers, registers, and shift registers, all of which realize a single, contained function. Other circuits implement more complex functions. State of the art methodology often dictates the design of sequential circuits to realize complex functions. One such complex function is the arbitration of hardware resources, i.e. arbitration between several request-issuing entities seeking the right to use one shared hardware entity for a specific period of time. Although several round robin circuits are known, none has proven entirely satisfactory.
Thus, a fast round robin circuit solving the aforementioned problems is desired.